Subject: Jerry
I think Jerry might've sent you a weird e-mail. Sorry about him.
How are you? I know we haven't spoken since the pauwau, but it's always nice to make friends on other reservations. If you don't want to, that's okay. Hope you're doing well all the same.
Signed,
Zander Top Sky
"Seriously," I said, "who the hell are these people?"
"Rafael!" Uncle Gabriel shouted. "Language!"
"Fine!" I growled. "Sorry!"
The third e-mail was the only one whose sender I recognized. My heart jumped, resounding in my ears. I smashed my fingers on the computer-controller-thing until the message opened up, rewarding me with its contents.
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Subject: rafael!!
blah!! ok sorry i missed you today. i'm cleaning out the attic (and the cellar...;) and i found a bunch of old textiles granny didn't even know she had. no not in the cellar! in the attic. it was pretty cool, i think some of them date back to the depression? i miss you like crazy. i even listened to that glam metal station out in gallup so i could pretend you were with me. dad was pretty worried, i guess he thought i'd lost my mind. but...i...never had one...mwahahaha...
wait, rafael. what if you aren't even reading this? you've never used a computer before, have you, rafael? oh no. oh jeez. well, thats ok, i will just have to show you how to use one. we had a couple of computers in my old school. they were really clunky and broke down a lot. this one guy i knew used to put his old chewing gum in the disk drive, maybe that had something to do with it?
i really hope i am not bothering you by talking so much (but you love to read so it should be ok right?) (are you reading this? im so confused). it's just that i miss you is all. one day without you and i already miss you, wow. actually i am not surprised. i dont think you realize what you're like as a person, you know? knowing you makes me so happy. it's just the way you smile when i least expect it. it's the way you treat animals and children, and how you feel so strongly about the things no one really thinks about, like lightbulbs and toothpaste; and how you manage to find a story in everything around you. it's like: "i can't believe this person is real." but you're real! you're so amazing, rafael.
oh no i'd better get going, dad just got stuck in the curtains again.
see you tomorrow!
sky( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
My first thought was: What the hell was that face supposed to be?
I read Sky's letter a second time. A third. My heart swelled hotly, threatening to burst open. I wanted to reach through the screen and grab Sky. I wanted to pull him against me until it ached and I had to let go, but even then I wouldn't.
"Rafael!" Uncle Gabe said. "Homework time!"
My teeth gnashed together until I tasted weak blood. Stupid teeth. I closed Sky's e-mail, but didn't turn off the computer; I didn't know how. I dragged my feet when I skulked into the kitchen, sitting down at the raised island. My science notebook was already open to the summer worksheet, only half completed.
"You finish your homework, you can visit your friends," Uncle Gabriel said. He wrapped up elk meat. He stuffed it in the freezer.
I bent my head over my notebook, sulking while I tried to figure out what gyroscopic force meant. I'll admit, though, it felt nice to be able to read the words without squinting. A couple of hours into my homework I heard the front door open and close. Uncle Gabe and I turned our heads as Rosa shuffled into the kitchen in hospital scrubs, a brief smile finding home on her plump face.
"I'll make dinner tonight," Rosa said.
"Was work alright?" Uncle Gabriel asked.
"Yes." Rosa looked at me. "I like your glasses."
"Thanks," I said, quietly endeared.
"And to think," Uncle Gabe said heartily, "you didn't want them."
"Nuh-uh," I said. I found my Charlotte Doyle book sitting on top of a pile of old newspapers. Discreetly, I tugged it onto my lap.
Rosa sautéed trout for dinner and Uncle Gabe looked over my homework for me, but admitted he didn't know what a gyroscopic force was himself. Much as I hated school, I actually wanted to pass this term. I'd decided I was going to be a speech therapist, which required more schooling than was humanly healthy. I closed my homework book; but two seconds later I changed my mind. I flipped to the empty back page and sketched cannibal fairies with my pencil stub, their mouths and torn wings soaked in triumphant blood.
Uncle Gabe and Rosa filled the room with their idle chatter, with their auras, sunny orange and shy pink. I lifted my head, eyebrows furrowing.
"Is something the matter?" Rosa asked.
"D'you hear that?" I asked, looking toward the wall.
It sounded like hooves: not heavy enough to belong to a horse, not light enough to belong to a deer. The footsteps resounded in a rhythm of two-to-two, the same ambling gait as an antelope.
"I don't think I hear anything," Uncle Gabriel said.
Rosa shook her head helplessly. She took the trout off the wood-coal stove.
All throughout the rest of the evening, even when we went into the sitting room, I heard antelope hooves. Rosa's piano playing didn't drown them out. Nor did the lacrosse scores on the radio. Nor did Uncle Gabe's laughter when Rosa told him that one of the hospital's nurses, Robert, had shown up to work wearing a feather boa. It got to the point where I dug my hunting spear out of my closet and crept outside the house; but apart from a silvery dove resting low on the oak tree, I didn't see anything. I went back inside my house, puzzled. Maybe I ought to have had my ears checked at the same time as my eyes.
"Raf," Uncle Gabriel said from the sofa. "I think you left the computer on."
I put my spear against the wall. I sat down in front of the computer and tried to figure out which button turned the damn thing off. Three seconds in I gave up. I opened Sky's e-mail and read it for the fifth time.
Every breath I sucked in dizzied me. My head spun off my shoulders, floating. My chest ballooned and my stomach tingled and my fingers went itchy and hot. Sky was out of his mind. This guy walked around every day without realizing how important he was, how rare of a person. And then he had the nerve to say all these kind things about me. It was like a prince bowing to a pauper. It was like the sun and stars complimenting a candle. Kind words ought to have been reserved for him. There was no kinder person they could possibly describe.
Uncle Gabriel draped a blanket over a drowsy Rosa. I inched behind the couch. I sat on the cushioned window seat, watching the swollen red sun drift slowly toward the chalky blue horizon, a hot air balloon bound for home. With a swoop and a rush, I left myself leaving my body. I was inside the hot air balloon. I was inside the macrocosmic snowflake, all of creation connected, although from afar it didn't look much like anything at all, much less a plan.
I was blind once. I don't mean before I got the eyeglasses. I used to walk around in shadows and ugliness. I couldn't see the people around me for what they were, or even appreciate my own home. In my loneliness, I consorted with monsters to pass the time.
A light followed me around nowadays. It hovered over my shoulders, cloaking me in warmth. It illuminated the recesses of my own mind. I'd forgotten what ugliness looked like, or even that it was a human trait.
I laid my forehead against the cool window glass. I searched the windows of the log cabins outside, stunned by their clarity: the black panes, the wooden planters, the blinds and curtains in assorted reds and blues and greens. I couldn't see Sky's house from here, but I pretended that I could.
My eyes slid closed, sleepy, peaceful. The last thing I saw was a flash of white hooves.
2
Time-Traveler
The next morning I woke up early to go to church with Rosa. Normally Uncle Gabe went with us, but today he had to drive into the city on an errand for the tribal council. I thought a Daigwani running errands for his own council was pretty ass backwards, but decided not to say anything.
"Are you ready, Rafael?" Rosa asked outside my room.
"Coming," I said.
I tied a dove's feather in the braid beside my temple. Now that autumn was approaching that dove in my tree was going to stop molting pretty soon. I didn't know what to do about that, except to use the feathers I still had sparingly. Maybe Mom would send me more if I remembered to ask her. I prayed to her sometimes, after all; more than I prayed to God.
Rosa and I left the house together after a quick breakfast of wojapi, the blueberry kind. She wrapped her arm around mine comfortably. I liked that. It made me feel like I'd known her longer than I really had.
"Sky's coming to church today," I said.
Rosa looked at me with understanding. Except I doubted she knew anything about how fast my heart was thundering, how little breath actually reached my lungs. I had to be the weakest creature on the planet. Only thinking about Sky was enough to make me lose my train of thought. Only hearing his name twisted my stomach in an explosive ball of pleasant nerves. It was a wonder I managed to contain myself when we were in the same room.
"He's a good boy," Rosa said. "And so are you."
Embarrassed, I determined not to meet her eyes. Instead I eyed the dead weeds scattered on the ground, the grackles picking at the barren soil for their breakfast. Suddenly a girl's voice called my name.
"Hi, Rafael!"
It was June Threefold. She waved at me from the porch of a lopsided log cabin. I waved back, slow, stunned.
Rosa and I walked a little farther down the path. It happened again.
"Hi, Rafael," Matthew Tall Ridge said, loading up lumber in a wheelbarrow. "I like your glasses."
"Hi, Rafael!" said Allen Calling Owl, just as Rosa and I took the dirt road south.
"What's going on?" I asked, dazed. My feet got all mixed up. I almost tripped.
Rosa caught my arm. "I told you you looked handsome," Rosa said quietly, smiling.
It hit me just then that these eyeglasses were a blessing in disguise. All my life people had mistaken me for my father. We had the same face, after all, except that mine was dimpled, and my eyes were blue. But Dad had never worn eyeglasses. These glasses were a huge discrepancy, something that finally, physically set the two of us apart.
"I freaking love my glasses," I said roughly.
Rosa patted my head.
We came up on the austere white church. We went inside the church and sat on the back pew. An overpowering sun poured through the windows, momentarily blinding me. I looked around, but didn't see Sky. Antsy, I tapped my fingers against my leg. What did Sky look like now? He had to look different; but at the same time I didn't think that was possible. Think about the clouds the way they look before a sun shower, wet and transparent, a shining, shivering gray made up of red-grays and lavender-grays, even flashes of blue where the sky promises its return. Those clouds are so prismatic you can't help but hold your breath; and when you release it, you taste the coming rain. Do you get what I'm saying? Nature is already perfect. How do you improve on perfection?
"Uh," said a boy on the pew in front of mine.
Sage In Winter turned around in his seat. He sat on his knees and stared at me, his mouth open, reminding me of a fish. The kid was about eleven years old, his hair spiky, his shirt sleeves too short for his gangling body.
I gave him a weird look. "What?"
Sage cringed. "Stop snarling at me!"
"I'm not snarling!" I protested; although I couldn't be sure. My face doesn't always do what I want it to do.
Sage's sister Prairie Rose rapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and faced the front of the room, wincing. Reverend Silver Wolf took to the pulpit as the last of the parishioners milled into his church. I caught a flash of blond curls in the front pew and sat up straight. I turned my eyes away, nervous.
"Let us remember," Reverend Silver Wolf said, "that the Gray Bear, too, showed us the way to eternity. He left his white trail in the sky for us to follow."
Sky, I thought. His name echoed in my ears. Sky. Sky.
Sky came and sat down next to me. I stuck a wad of chewing gum in my mouth to calm my nerves. I felt him staring at me, my arms tingling, sweat beading on my neck. The whole church turned into a spinning carousel, merry music piping in my ears. Carousels freak me out for some reason.
Rafael? Sky said, touching my elbow.
One fleeting touch from him halted the whirling horses. I took a moment to clear my head of vertigo. I forced myself to look at him, steeling myself for the inevitable: that he looked differently, or that I did, and he didn't like it.
Sky was the same Sky as ever, his curls crazy and gold and flopping around his forehead and his ears. His smile was the same smile, bright and unassuming, like he'd never had a bad thought about anyone in his life. His light was the source of every other light, a white fringed in red and orange and bronze and magenta and latticed with hatchworks in dark blue and dark silver and faint lilac. The wooden carousel benches were brown because he lent them brown-colored light. It was the same for the technicolor awning over our heads, the rust-colored platform under our feet. I wondered if it was the same for me. I wondered if I stopped being Rafael when Sky wasn't around me, if my hair wasn't black and my eyes weren't blue and my nail polish wasn't purple, if I was colorless and indistinct.
Sky was the same Sky, except more. I could see the little flaws in his teeth when he smiled, a snaggletooth on the top row I'd never noticed before. I could see the pores in his white skin, the patchiness of his brown birthmark, the sunshine smudged on his straight nose. His skin wasn't only white, but every color, every frequency in the visible spectrum flitting and blending and blurring together in the illusion of a solid boy. His eyebrows were brown. His eyes were a pale brown, small and quick like a fox's. I had the idea that that was an illusion, too.
Sky's mouth opened with surprise. Eyeglasses? he said.
"Uncle Gabe made me get 'em," I muttered.
It was the only defense I had, because what if he thought I looked stupid? My face burned with embarrassment. I wished I could disappear at will.
The carousel moved slowly, the ugly plastic horses bobbing up and down. Sky waded through them to me, his face breaking into a second smile. He wrapped his hand around one of the twisted brass poles, his eyes attentive, even admiring. It made me shy.
I like them, Rafael, Sky said. You look really nice.
I faltered. "You sure?" I asked quietly, the floor revolving under my feet.
Well, Sky said, I always think you look nice.
It was the sun and stars complimenting a candle. I roiled with anger at the injustice. My anger dulled, because I was with Sky; because you can't stay angry when you're with Sky. Dark dots skittered around his pupils, something I'd noticed last summer and had wanted to decipher, but hadn't been able to. Now I saw them for what they really were: flecks of burnt gold, like royal kindling. Kind fire flickered in his eyes, loving everything in sight.
It was torture to sit through mass when I wanted to scoop Sky in my arms, to pull him on my lap and kiss his neck and his curls and his bony knuckles and his skinny shoulders. Somehow I figured Reverend Silver Wolf wouldn't appreciate the display. He preached from his seat on a plastic white stallion, his eyes fixed on his Bible. I wanted to ask him how his granddaughter Sarah was doing. The spinning and swirling of the carousel tied my stomach in knots. I thought I was going to hurl. But then Sky put his hand on top of mine, his fingers soft, calm like windless seas. I loved the seas. I loved the ocean so much.
When Reverend Silver Wolf slapped his Bible closed Sky put his arm around my waist, the carousel slowing to a stop. My head turned confused circles on my shoulders. Sky tugged me to a stand, and I followed him; we stepped off the carousel platform, and it disappeared. Before I knew it we were standing on the sparse grass outside the white church doors. The macrocosmic snowflake hung full over Sky's head, crystals refracting his glow in hues of everything.
Come with me? Sky said
.
We paid a visit to the cemetery behind the church, small and crumbling and tucked away in creaking black gates. Sky led the way to one of the headstones--his uncle's, I think. He knelt down and kissed it. I couldn't help thinking stupid shit, like: Lucky headstone.
What did you say? Sky asked.
"Nothing," I mumbled, embarrassed.
Sky stood up and faced me. His serene smile stripped me bare. He put his fingers on my arm, tracing his way up to my shoulder. His hand came to a rest on my cheek, touching the dimple there.
I really like your glasses, Rafael.
I grabbed his hips and pulled him against me. I saw the victorious smile on his lips just before I kissed them. I couldn't help myself. You can't blame me for that. His fingers roamed my face, my hairline, my braids. I pressed him back against the gate to the graveyard and he opened his mouth for me. I wanted all of him. If you knew him like I knew him, you'd want him yourself.
Ow, he said into my mouth.
My glasses had banged the bridge of his nose.
"You okay?" I asked quickly, jumping back.
Sky rubbed his nose. Sky beamed at me. Just takes some getting used to.
"I'm gonna burn the freaking things," I swore.
Don't do that, Sky said.
"They hurt you," I said. "That's not allowed."
Rafael, you're so strange.
"It's not allowed," I said angrily.
Why don't you fix it, then?
I took his head in my hands and kissed his nose. Beautiful, muted laughter bubbled between his lips, rippling his chest. I pressed our chests together so I could feel the rippling in mine. I pressed our foreheads together, searching his eyes, greedily drinking in their mirth. I didn't know where it came from. I didn't know why he never ran out of it. All I knew for sure was that it was impossible not to feel happy around him. It was impossible not to love him.
"You're so," I murmured.
It's okay, he said. He combed my hair with his fingers. His eyes swam with kindness; I thought I might drown.
"Cubby?" Sky's dad said.